Report: Ohioans losing battle with obesity

TNS Regional News
•
Aug 17, 2013 at 2:07 PM

The good news? Ohioans aren’t getting much fatter.

The bad news, of course, is that they aren’t losing weight, either. A new report shows that Ohio remains firmly in 13th place when it comes to nationwide obesity, with 30.1 percent of Ohioans labeled obese in 2012, up just slightly from 29.6 percent from the previous year.

Among those, Baby Boomers make up the largest group. Nearly 35 percent of Ohioans age 45-64 are obese, defined as having a body mass index of at least 30.

The report, "F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future,” is an annual collaboration put out by the nonprofit Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rarely does it deliver optimistic results, but researchers found a bright spot this year: After three decades of increases, obesity rates leveled off in nearly every state.

Still, the report said, rates remain high, and they come with consequences. In Ohio, for instance, more than one in 10 adults is diabetic, and nearly one-third has hypertension. One-quarter of them don’t exercise.

Nationally, obesity-related illnesses cost from $147 billion to nearly $210 billion a year, the report said. Those figures are expected to soar, especially as Baby Boomers continue to age into health problems related to weight.

Among the report’s other findings:

Men have closed the obesity gap. In Ohio, 30.5 of men and 29.7 percent were considered obese in 2012.

Among Ohio adults, 15.3 percent of those aged 18 to 25 were obese, as were 32.2 percent of those aged 26 to 44.